Slow down a moment. I wasn't asking for hours of background research to be presented to meet my approval or anything.

The claim has been repeatedly made that Monsanto has been, on a sweeping scale, been suing farmers with no desire to use it's seed when their crops are accidentally contaminated. All I requested was to be given one single example of that actually happening. Nobody has ever presented an example to me. This leads me to not only conclude, but to declare to all who will listen that this particular charge is a lie and a fabrication.

The closest I ever get to an example is Percy, and he sprayed his own seed crop with round up before harvesting the surviving few plants along the border of his neighbor's crop. I do not count carrying on to plant only those seeds as accidental, and Percy has readily admitted that is what he did.

The description sounds like it's the story of Percy Schrieber, one man's fight with Monsanto. Forgive me, but if that is in fact accurate I'm not sitting through a 1 hour accounting. Percy Schrieber's story is nothing like those described by Shatterdose and others. He wasn't sued for his crop getting cross contaminated. He wasn't sued for continuing to replant seed from his previous crop as he had been doing for years and years.

Percy Schrieber deliberately and intentionally set out to plant Monsanto's GMO canola on his own fields, and went to MORE work to accomplish this than most any other farmer that'd been growing that variety. What is more, he has freely admitted this. I can NOT understand how he still remains a rallying point for folks claiming Monsanto is suing farmers just because their seed crop was cross contaminated by their neighbor. I have yet to be pointed to an example of Monsanto doing that to anyone in North America. Until I am pointed to one, I'm getting pretty tired of the completely baseless accusation being declared and accepted as proven fact and matter of course. Monsanto IS a massive corporation, and no doubts has all manner of dirty deeds to it's name, but this particular charge seems to be entirely fabricated to me and that drives me nuts. It renders all manner of valid complaints and concerns less valid all to quickly.

@shatterdose,
Would you have examples of the farmers Monsanto has sued or driven out of business over cross contamination? I'm not familiar with any myself despite hearing the claim repeatedly and would hate to be blind to such a serious injustice.

I also have trouble understanding your overall position. You seem to spend most of your time arguing how terrible GMO is for farmers and seem to be arguing it is bad because it is harmfull to them. You end your post arguing in favor of farmers again and calling for a return to showing them greater respect than they are being shown today. I hope I followed that much correctly? As a guy who grew up as a farm kid, and have a very big portion of my family and social circle running family farms I would second the importance of those businesses. What I wonder is if you understand that virtually all family farms whose primary income is that farm have been choosing by their own free will to plant GMO crops because it helps their bottom line.

It's not a corporate conspiracy driving the GMO domination of seeds planted here in North America. In fact, all the family farmers I grew up around are well agreed that GMO crops have been one of the biggest factors that has helped them keep their family operations profitable so they didn't have to close up shop and sell things off. The picture you paint of Monsanto systematically driving family farms out of business is simply put, fictional from what I see in the Family farm dominated economy of the region I live in. I haven't looked outside of North America nearly as closely, but for this region your account just does not bear out to the reality I see around me everyday.

Cross-hybridization is one thing. Patenting a cow you found in Africa and then suing the life out of the original tribe is the Monsanto way. Or, changing one gene and then claiming ownership of all corn in the US and then suing small farmers when their crops get contaminated (and of course, denying it) is GMO. The fight against GMO isn't always a "health" concern about wanting to stay truer to our millions of years of evolution and cohabitation with certain foods. It's also about fighting against mega-corperations that unfairly target small farmers with regulations such as requiring white painted walls . . . yearly, or requiring an office and bathroom for a health inspector to use once a year that no one else can use ever, or so many laws and regulations that a small farmer can inadvertently break the law, steal someone's intellectual property and be sued out of existence all while doing the same thing their family has been doing for over 100 years.

When we plant crops of only one variety over large swathes of land we invite disaster. It's already happen numerous times. Hell, no one remember deadly spinach killing around 50 people with no way to trace the origin? Mad Cow? Or the destruction of economies in their world countries because Monsanto requires only their crop to be grown and subsistence farmers into the ghetto's of India so that more High Fructose Corn Syrup can be made.

Or worse . . . the US Farm Bill . . . *shivers*

So no, it's not always about health. It's about staying true to the roots of a society that worships our farmers as life-givers, essential to our health and economy and free of unknown risk that could catastrophically damage the world as we know it all while ending a giant untouchable monopoly that refuses to let even the tiniest bit of oversight oversee it's operations so it can continue to "own life."

I must disagree. Because WE don't USE them as a food resource does not mean they aren't one...and even if you don't think they should be food for anyone (and I'm not sure why that should be the case, but I do understand why many people wouldn't want to eat them both because of sentimental and health/meat contamination reasons) they are used as a 'resource' in many countries including the USA...a tourism resource is still a resource.
Perhaps you meant 'dolphins should not be a food source'?

If that is all true (and I read through much of the linked study and made little sense of it since I'm not a nutritionist and only took one semester of advanced molecular biology, it was particularly technical and hard to follow), then golden rice seems to be the exception.
As I read it, 55-70% the RDA was the maximum vitamin A that could be expected, with the range being quite large. (oddly they cite a 200 gram rice dose given in the study has 1.3mg b-carotene/3.8 to get .34mg retinol, then a 100 gram dose is estimated to provide 55-70% EAR , then they say a 50 gram dose, a more reasonable amount for children to eat, would provide the same amount as the 100 gram dose did?) Even if it can supply 1/2 the daily allowance of vitamin A (which I'm not sure it can from the study you cite), that still does not make it 'safe' to release into the 'wild', or 'better' than natural, easy to grow alternatives as unknown long term side effects have not been studied. It may be better than doing nothing, or even better than natural alternatives, but without long term studies we simply can't know. That's my main point.
$10K a year is not much for a farm to make, most small farms make far more than that, but also need to spend all they make to keep going. That limit seems to say they DO intend to charge most farmers for this seed eventually. If that's $10K a year profit, I'm OK with that.
I would say we should hold up potentially life saving technology until we know the unintended side effects, we should not experiment on the needy (or the public in general) and claim it's in their best interest. We certainly should not do it in secret, as in non-labeled gmo's.
Monsanto is not the only bio-tech company that acts like this, just the most public. Most GMO creating bio-techs are pitbulls about protecting their 'intellectual property', even when it floats onto someone's property without their knowledge.
I stand corrected, she did say that. I missed it. I do not claim they don't have higher yields, I think that's their whole point and I think they do a decent job of producing more. I just don't see that higher yields are worth the possible long term damage and I think more, longer term, double blind studies need to be done by disinterested parties. Long term side effects can take a long time to show up, and with something this new to the food source, it deserves careful consideration, not profit driven usage.
Again, 'golden rice' is an exception if you are correct. My limited experience is with Monsanto corn and soy, which seem to be in a different category. Most GMOs are not made with variety, and ARE made to have a clear adaptive advantage, so I made an assumption that 'golden rice' would be the same. My bad. Even with that though, the genes WILL end up mixing with some other non-gmo rice, making it difficult or impossible to ensure your crop is not gmo of that's what you want. They may not dominate, but if they end up causing cancer in 10 years, and by then 99% of rice is 'contaminated', then what? I just think safety (edit: I meant to say forethought) is the better part of valor, and better that a few go without today than open the possibility of all going without tomorrow when patience and thoughtful examination can prove safety. Of course, I'm not going blind of vitamin A deficiency or starving from lack of corn...so perhaps my opinion doesn't matter.
To a few of your other points, if gmo's are safe, prove it (Monsanto and the like) and do it incontrovertibly and publicly, then we'll all want them. If the argument is that 'stupid hippies have convinced everyone they're bad, so we have to sell them in secret', that argument doesn't hold water in my mind. Monsanto could certainly afford a public service campaign if the science was in, but the LONG term studies aren't done yet.
Teaching someone to grow peppers or other vegi's seems easier than modifying a crop and spreading the seeds, it takes about 5 minutes and adds variety. I think that's better than treating them as un-teachable and experimenting on them.
...and I agree with the scientists in sciencemag, destroying the test fields isn't helpful and answers nothing.

And it seems so is what you say, false that is...
From what I've seen, the argument that 'golden rice' cures vitamin A deficiency is false. There's simply not enough vitamin A in it. It is useful as a supplement, as are many other things less dangerous to the food supply.
Yes, it is distributed to farmers for free, at first. Then, once other varieties are no longer available, they begin charging for it, and suing anyone that doesn't pay to grow their crop (the only one left to grow). Is that a difficult concept to understand? It's the same business plan crack, meth, and heroin dealers use, get you hooked for free, then charge you once you're hooked. They certainly did that with their corn.
She did not claim they do not produce higher yields, she said the science that claims they do is only produced by the companies that benefit. Those are different claims. When only the one benefiting from positive results does the science, it's not trustworthy, ever.
If 'golden rice' replaces the other multiple strains of non-gmo rice because it offers SOME vitamin A, then there's a disease that kills all 'golden rice' (as always happens when variety is homogenized for profit and convenience) then what? There's NO rice for anyone. That's what's happening with chickpeas, the staple food for a HUGE portion of the population. One strain was adopted for profit and convenience, and it's now failing world wide. Wild chickpeas, incredibly hard to find now, offer the only solution to the failing commercial chickpea, and it may be far too late. If we lose rice too, we'll lose a large portion of the population of the planet. Now, with that possible outcome, is it worth it to experiment with GMO rice and exclude other strains? (those who grow GMO rice are usually forced to grow ONLY GMO strains to 'avoid cross contamination'.)
Most vocal activists are NOT science deniers, they are people pushing for legitimate, responsible science where the populace is not the guinea pig for corporate experiments. That is NOT responsible science.
Most of what this girl advocates is labeling, which can not be legitimately argued against. Like others said, if GMO's were good, they would WANT you to know they're in there. If they could PROVE it was good, they would. The science isn't in on long term effects, or on short term collateral unintended effects, so the products should not be for sale, certainly not without a label warning those using it that they are experimental and unproven. At least that's how I see it.

I hate to say something 'pro' Monsanto but the example listed in Percy Schmeiser is NOT an example of a farmer that accidentally had his field cross contaminated by Monsanto's seeds. Percy collected seed from his own crops to plant the following year. One year that his crop bordered a neighbour's Monsanto crop, he intentionally harvested seeds only from along that border. Even more importantly, he sprayed the strip with round-up first. Deliberately destroying your own seed crop with round up isn't 'normal' procedure for any seed grower. Percy Schmeiser knowingly and deliberately did everything he could to plant Monsanto's round up ready seeds. He in many ways went to greater lengths and efforts to get the seed than farmers regularly using it.

His case is one of whether what he did should be legal, in my opinion it should be, and tough luck to Monsanto as long as he's not off re-selling it I think it should be ok. Turns out Canadian law went the other way and declared it copyright infringement. I can understand the argument that GMO research can't happen if there's no profit in it, but it's a hard line.

All that though is to simply point out that this doesn't seem to be only about those guys accidentally being contaminated. The specific example the speaker references went to great lengths to get Monsanto's seed into his fields.

Those two bimbos resemble hookers in appearance, apparent morals, and intelligence level. The bonehead who keeps putting on and taking off his glasses is a sociopath of the highest order. The black guy is a sell-out.

Basically these people are all pieces of shit and I'd be thrilled to hear they got ass-cancer from contamination in the studio.

Although fun for making a one-minute video - completely impracticable for pumpkin burning - Crap, even if you did manage to keep it going longer, you can't eat the cooked pumpkin, it's contaminated with fuel and borax.

Stick to candles, there's a reason they've worked all these years.

I think that you will find reactors don't produce weapons grade plutonium, rather, they produce a grade of plutonium known as reactor grade. Weapons grade plutonium is upwards of 95% Pu239. Reactor grade plutonium is what is known as weapons usable, not weapons ready. This is because of the high contamination factor of Pu240, Pu241, and Pu242. These heavier breads of Pu have both high spontaneous fission rates (bad for your fission weapon), and considerable heat, enough so to make weapons fabrication a problem (is it bad when your closed weapons device needs ventilation to not melt itself). While these problems are addressable in advanced weapons platforms, outside of well established nuclear weapons programs, making weapons from them is very challenging.

The main trouble, however, I think is economics, and nuclear is forced to internalize many of their impacts where as other solutions, mainly fossil fuels, do not. That is a pretty key competitive disadvantage.

Also note that electricity is only a fraction of total power, total power includes many non-electrical uses, most notably motor vehicles via liquid fuels. When you look at solar in this light, it represents a sub-fraction of a percent. So 5% of annual solar electrical generation is only a small part of a larger energy picture, and picture which also needs to be weighted against the rest of the world for which solar provides very little power. This isn't an attack on solar, it is a bringing to light of how vast the gulf is to address climate issues with any one technology.

So I think you will find that he isn't off by orders of magnitude, rather, he was being pretty generous to the total amount of energy produced by solar and wind world wide, and climate issues and emissions are world issues.

Key World Energy STATISTICS IEA:

http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/kwes.pdf

(I trust the IEA's numbers)

But I share the sentiment that we need to reduce coal and gas to address climate concerns. The fact that German emissions have risen for 2 years in a row is troubling to say the least. I consider France and Sweden to be better models, lower CO2 per capita and electrical prices in both cases compared to Germany, and both heavy nuclear users...with Sweden using a fair deal more hydro power than France. Nuclear and hydro are the proven heavy lifters in the area of CO2 reductions, which is why I think his criticism of environmental groups in addressing climate issues is justified as they generally oppose both.

CLIMATE CHANGE AND NUCLEAR POWER 2012 IAEA:

http://www.iaea.org/OurWork/ST/NE/Pess/assets/12-44581_ccnp2012_web.pdf

What Taylor built though was a fusor though, not a breeder reactor. A fusor is basically a vacuum chamber with a high voltage wire run into the center and a place to puff in a bunch of fuel gas. With a fusor you get a short term burst of radiation, but nothing before or after is contaminated. With a breeder reactor you start with a bunch of dirty material and make more even dirtier material.

So these thingy-dealies won't contaminate ground water if they gusplode? (He really would make a lovely he-she though, and Chloe with a flapper-cut, a fettishing boy)

Someone's physical androgynous characteristics has nothing to do with their sexuality, does it? merely an observation...similar to the one I made based in my 'ignace' of nuclear power, and all her fucked iterations.

I've been anti-nuclear from the git-go, always will be-
I also must maintain that the power that will push the planet into the next exponential blast (if numb, distracted peeps don't let asshole humans turn the place into a dystopian shit hole) won't come from an energy source that uses radioactive anything-It's gonna be something else that creates the energy needed for whatever sustainable future awaits.

my instincts is all I'm going on, but this cat's gonna get snatched-up by insect-keepers for profit and mayhem...Or fuck me, maybe he's gonna be another Nicole Tesla-(pun-intended, the kids cute)

sexuality my ass.....

Okay, I will upvote but I am curious--where the hell are these hidden costs? Just because a sniper shoots you in face it doesn't mean he was hidden.

*I open door, shot in face by sniper two feet away*

The hidden secret of water? Yeah, you can get sick by drinking water with viruses or water that has been contaminated with toxins--but did you know you could also drown?! It's true!!!

Sorry, I could go on and on but I will stop. (And we cannot say the percentages are "secret" because, well, just because you don't know something doesn't mean it's "hidden")

Agreed that the contamination is the worst part, the earthquakes are merely yet another potential hazard.

So far, the science is still at a reasonably early stage, but there is certainly some evidence to suggest that earthquakes in previously non-seismically active areas have been caused (or at the very least worsened) by fracking.